Taking the Bull by the Horns

The problem with wanting to impress someone is that you always end up doing the exact opposite.

I'm standing at the edge of the pool, clutching my solo cup like it's a lifeline. Carlos's pool party is in full swing—people are doing cannonballs, someone's blasting terrible music through blown-out speakers, and Alex is across the deck, looking unfairly cute in his swim trunks.

"Go talk to him," my best friend Kia says, appearing behind me with a freshly opened soda. "You've been staring at him for like twenty minutes. It's getting weird."

"I'm not staring," I lie. "I'm... observing. From a tactical distance."

"You're being a cat," she says. "All skittish and weird. Just go over there."

Before I can come up with another excuse, Carlos's cat—a massive orange tabby named Chonk—comes streaking past, knocking over a speaker and somehow managing to tangle himself in the thick black cable running to the DJ setup. The music dies with a horrible electronic screech.

Everyone freezes.

Chonk bolts toward the pool, trailing the cable behind him like a snake.

"Oh SHOOT," Carlos yells, but he uses the actual swear word, and then there's chaos.

Someone—I think it's Alex—lunges for the cable. Chonk, sensing capture, does a parkour move off the pool ladder and launches himself directly into the water.

The cat surfaces immediately, looking personally victimized, swimming determinedly toward the shallow end like he's been training for this moment his whole life.

"That's the most Jacksonville thing I've ever seen," Alex says from beside me, and I jump because I didn't even realize he'd walked over.

He's wet—like, really wet, shirt stuck to his chest, hair dripping. He must've jumped in after Chonk.

"I was going to go in," I say, and immediately want to die. "I mean, not to—to save the cat. I was going to..."

He laughs, and it's this warm, genuine sound that makes my stomach do something concerning. "It's okay. You were about to take the bull by the horns."

"What?"

"The bull," he says, gesturing vaguely at Chonk, who is now being dried off with a beach towel while looking offended. "Taking it by the horns. That's a saying, right?"

"I don't think that's how that saying works," I say, but I'm smiling, and then we're both laughing, and somehow we're sitting on the pool edge with our feet in the water, talking about everything and nothing for the next hour.

When Kia finds us later, she does this tiny victory dance in the background that she thinks I don't see.

I still didn't get Alex's number. But we're going to the movies tomorrow, and sometimes that's how it happens—not with a dramatic gesture or a perfect moment, but with a wet cat, a tangled cable, and someone who makes you laugh when you're standing in soaked clothes at a pool party.

Progress, I guess.